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Sen. Bill Brady on Friday came to terms with the Associated Press' assessment a day earlier that it was mathematically impossible for him to close the roughly 19,000 vote gap and conceded the race to Gov. Pat Quinn. (Published Friday, Nov. 5, 2010)

Quinn: "This is an Awesome Job"

"I got into this race not for political reasons but because I thought there were problems in Illinois," he said. "I think we articulated ideas well."

Speaking in Chicago, Quinn said his election win was "defying the odds."

"They had me down 13 points. I never really believed that. When you're down 13 points, nobody throws rosebuds," he said.

The governor renewed his committment to creating jobs -- "it's not Democratic jobs or Republican jobs" -- and improving schools, saying he wants to "make sure nobody in the country out-educates Illinois."

"We can sit down and have lunch and work together for the common good of Illinois," said Quinn. "We may have differences -- strong differences -- on policy issues, but we are all Americans and we're all Illinoisans and we have to work together for the common good at all times."

Of Illinois' 102 counties, Brady won all but three of them. In fact, going into the final 24 hours of the race, it was obvious that the Brady forces thought they had won.

And it's easy to understand why. So many polls had the Brady camp leading.

But the three counties Brady lost are among the most populous in the state, including Cook County. More than half of Quinn's final vote tally came from metro Chicago. It's believed that organized labor played a major role in that.